Having just arrived home after a disappointing second-round loss at the Australian Open in January, world No. 5 Casper Ruud needed a pick-me-up.
As he so often does, he turned to golf. It was far too cold to play outside in the Norwegian winter, so he went to a simulator and felt better after hitting some balls that were small, hard and white rather than fuzzy and yellow.
This week, golf will again take precedence. Ruud is skipping this week’s ATP 500 Rio de Janeiro Open — which is played on clay, his preferred surface — to play in the Mexican Open, which begins on hard courts in Acapulco Monday, Feb. 24. Before going to Acapulco, he’s headed to Vallarta for another Mexican Open, this time in golf, where he will play a pro-am event Wednesday, Feb. 18 ahead of the PGA Tour’s fully fledged tournament there.
Acapulco is more than 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) away from Vallarta, but Ruud played an Ultimate Tennis Showdown (UTS) exhibition event in nearby Guadalajara last week and has been practising on the tennis court as well as the golf course in Vallarta. Earlier in February, Ruud reached the final of the Dallas Open. He played a few rounds of golf before and after that event, too, bringing his clubs with him for the February and March stretch of the tennis season, which is played mostly on hard courts in north and central America. Ruud, a tennis professional but golf obsessive, is in his element.
“I’ll try to remain calm, but I’m just a really curious golfer, so whoever I get to play with they will have to be prepared for me asking tons of questions about golf,” he said in a recent phone interview. “So I feel a little bit bad for them.” The pros in question will be America’s Taylor Moore for nine holes and Ruud’s fellow Norwegian Kristoffer Ventura for the other nine. His tee time is 8:58 a.m. local time Wednesday.
Ruud is widely considered to be the best golfer on the ATP Tour and competes with his dad and coach, Christian, once ranked No. 39 in tennis, and a good friend to shoot the best total score on the golf course through each year. Ruud edged his friend by just five shots in 2024. “It just shows — every shot matters during the year,” he says.
Ruud, a 26-year-old three-time Grand Slam finalist, is part of a long line of ATP and WTA players past and present who switch happily between tennis and golf. On the contemporary men’s tour, four-time Grand Slam champion Carlos Alcaraz is sharpening up his skills and becoming increasingly interested; fellow top-10 player Alex de Minaur is part of a group of Aussies who like to play competitively together, and men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner is trying — and largely failing on available evidence — to improve his swing.
Swinging into vacation… 🦊😂🏌♂️
📷: @darren_cahill pic.twitter.com/WmFTbUWRLs
— Janniksin_Updates (@JannikSinner_Up) November 25, 2024
Golf maps onto tennis in numerous ways, from the skills required to the low risk of injury that players look for in a downtime activity that keeps them moving. It fulfils the need for competition but is less adversarial than their main sport, sharing a course for 18 holes being very different to engaging in quasi-gladiatorial combat from the other side of a net. It’s also biomechanically complex in a way that tennis players are familiar with, even if these two sports of swings share little else in common.
Eight-time Grand Slam champion Ivan Lendl tried to make it as a golf professional after retiring from tennis in 1994. He once admitted to playing 250 rounds in a single year in order to play “scratch,” off a zero handicap. Lendl tried to qualify for the U.S. Open on five occasions and played five top-class professional events, twice on the European tour and three times on the Nationwide. Yevgeny Kafelnikov, the former world No. 1 and two-time singles Grand Slam champion, would request day-session matches at the Australian Open so he could go and play an afternoon’s round of golf.
More recently, America’s former world No. 7 Mardy Fish competed at the PGA Tour’s 3M Open event in 2022 but didn’t make the qualifying cut. Former world No. 1, three-time Grand Slam champion and one-time professional cricketer Ash Barty thought about a professional golf career after quitting tennis aged 25, while Rafael Nadal played golf throughout his career and was considered one of the best golfers on the men’s tour before his retirement.
Former world No. 4 Tim Henman has pretty much completely traded tennis in for golf since retiring in 2007. “Now, whenever I stand on a tennis court, I’m thinking my elbow hurts and I’d much rather be playing golf,” he told The Telegraph.
Henman, who plays off a +2 handicap like Ruud, cites all the typical benefits of golf.
“The risk of injury is very low,” he told a small group of reporters in January. “It’s quite a nice escape because when you’re on the course, you’re just with some friends and can get away from things. And obviously, it is a different game. It’s a different type of challenge.
“The skills are pretty transferable and I think because it’s a stationary ball we all think it should be a bit easier than it actually is when you’re hitting a moving ball at 140mph.”
De Minaur, who has described himself as an “Instagram golfer,” stresses how good it can be for his mental health. “I love it. It’s a way for me to disconnect, to relax, to enjoy the fresh air, the greenery and switch off,” he said in a recent interview.
When looking back on the 2010 U.S. Open win that completed his career Grand Slam, Nadal credited golf for boosting his preparation. “Never had I embarked on a US Open campaign feeling fresher,” he wrote in his autobiography. In the book, Nadal also says that he doesn’t really have sporting idols, with one exception: “If there is one sportsman that I admire outside the game of tennis, it is Tiger Woods.
“When he is at his best, I see in him what I would like to be myself. I like that winning look he has when he plays and I like most of all his attitude, his way of facing up to the moments of crisis when a game is won or lost. He might hit a bad shot and get angry with himself, but the next time he squares up to hit the ball, he is back in focus.”
Rafael Nadal, deep in concentration on the golf course. (Cristian Trujillo / Quality Sport Images via Getty Images)
America’s Danielle Collins partly credits golf for her first career WTA 1,000 title, which she won at the Miami Open in 2024. “I’m someone that needs a lot of mental stimulation. I feel like it keeps my brain sharp, keeps me thinking about different things, keeps me from focusing on tennis too much,” she said on the Tennis Channel.
“It also makes the tennis more fun because I’m so bad at golf that when I come out and play tennis, compared to my golf game, I’m a lot better at tennis. So it makes me feel a lot better, too.”
Ruud isn’t convinced that golf has any benefit for his main sport, but it’s a constant refuge for him on the tennis tour.
“I think it’s important to find balance in life when you’re an athlete, to have some personal time where you’re disconnected. For me, the golf course is one of my favourite places to be,” he said.
During a news conference at the U.S. Open, Alcaraz said that he and Ruud discussed these benefits on the course in New York: “You have to have your life as well… So, for me, golf helps a lot, and with Casper, we spoke about it. He’s another level in golf. He plays unbelievable.”
Gabby Herzig, the former captain of the Pomona College varsity women’s golf team and now a golf staff writer for The Athletic, assessed just how unbelievable Ruud is, along with the other biggest golfers in tennis.
“Really compact, powerful swing with a nice upright follow-through. Looks like he plays a draw (right-to-left ball flight) which is typically a difficult shot shape for other professional athletes who pick up golf. Considering the motion required to hit a forehand, this makes sense.
“The club points a little too far to the right of his target, at the top of his backswing. That can cause some problems for the path of his downswing and might be holding him back from lower scores.”
On Nadal, Herzig said “there is a lot going on” in his swing — not a surprise for a player with perhaps the most idiosyncratic service routine in tennis.
“The fidgety setup, where he can’t seem to get comfortable over the ball is a concern in its own right. We’ve got a lot of swaying in this swing — Nadal basically moves completely off the ball in his backswing causing it to be extremely difficult to transfer his weight properly onto his left side.
“Apparently, he’s a scratch golfer, but I’m surprised he makes consistent contact with that move. Maybe his short game saves him, or maybe he’s just one of the most athletic people on the planet.”
Novak Djokovic — Nadal’s great rival who surpassed his career total in Grand Slams — would fall behind the Spaniard on the golf course.
“Djokovic’s swing kind of resembles what you’d expect a scratch golfer’s swing to look like if they switched hands,” Herzig said.
“It’s a little stiff, a little bit too dependent on the arms and lacks flexibility. His right foot looks like it’s planted to the ground, even after he strikes the ball. He needs to turn onto his toe to get proper rotation through the ball.”
.@DjokerNole drives the 16th green 🤯 #AllStarMatch | #RyderCup pic.twitter.com/H5Ozc0U2JU
— Ryder Cup (@rydercup) September 27, 2023
Alcaraz and Sinner, the two players at the top of the men’s game today, are close rivals on the court with a big gulf off it. Ruud describes Alcaraz as a “big talent,” but Herzig identified some areas for improvement.
“He gets a ton of speed in his swing, but he loses some of his posture as he gets closer to the top of the backswing — he stands up taller and his head moves away from the ball,” she said.
You’ll often hear Tiger Woods talking about keeping your hips back during the entire golf swing to avoid something called “early extension,” which is when your hips move toward the ball at impact. I’m sure Alcaraz could fix it in a matter of minutes with proper coaching.”
Sinner? Watch at your own risk. “Sinner has set himself up for failure even before he hits the ball. He’s standing in this strange squat-like position, his hands are way too low at address and he’s standing dangerously close to the ball,” Herzig said.
Barty, she is more impressed by — especially her “tempo” and “nice, smooth swing.”
World No. 22 Sebastian Korda is another tennis player Ruud cites as having golfing talent. His two sisters are professional golfers, with Nelly Korda, 26, winning 15 LPGA titles including two majors and currently sitting at No. 1 in the women’s world rankings.
In an interview with The Athletic at last year’s ATP Tour Finals, Ruud challenged the now golf-obsessed former world No. 1 Andy Murray to a game ahead of next year’s Wimbledon. Murray didn’t play golf during his tennis career because it risked hurting his back, but since retirement, he has thrown himself into it. He played a pro-am event at Wentworth in September, and according to a member of his team it “fills a bit of a gap for him.”
“Andy is a tall guy and you can see some qualities of a long-limbed golfer in his swing,” Herzig said. “He sort of throws his upper body at the ball in the downswing in an attempt to get lower, creating a sort of C-curve in his spine. Some of the best players in the world create a similar shape when they come into the ball, but Andy looks like he’s exaggerating the move a bit too much.
“This means some shots might be too bottom-heavy and others might catch the top of the ball — ‘fat’ or ‘thin’ shots. Apparently, his driver is his best club, which aligns with this; he doesn’t have to worry so much about the low point of his swing when the ball is teed up.”
🗣️’I couldn’t feel my arms and legs!’ 😅@andy_murray was feeling the nerves as he teed off at the PGA Championship 🏌️♂️ pic.twitter.com/mcltARuck8
— BBC Sport Scotland (@BBCSportScot) September 18, 2024
Ruud’s own strong golf game is built around his drives, which can fly over the 300-yard mark. He told The Athletic in November that as much as it would be a dream to turn professional in golf after retiring from tennis, he doesn’t think that’s realistic.
He also doesn’t play golf if he has a tennis match the next day, believing that it’s too much of a physical and mental load to put on himself. Lendl, by contrast, found time to play nine holes on the day of his 1986 U.S. Open semifinal against Stefan Edberg, which he won in straight sets en route to the title. Alcaraz was so bitten by the golf bug in New York last year that he was spotted at the Deepdale Golf Club the day before his shock defeat to Botic van de Zandschulp at the U.S. Open.
On Monday, Ruud posted a message on X expressing his solidarity with his fellow tennis players who would be competing in sweltering conditions at the Rio Open, with temperatures reaching 98F (37C). He did so knowing that he instead would be on the golf course in Vallarta before it’s all tennis again in Acapulco next week.
For a day on Wednesday, Ruud can live out some of his golfing fantasies.
“I’m ready for anything,” he said.
— Gabby Herzig contributed analysis.
